One At a Time

The moronic sitcoms that we’ve all been raised with always present the phenomenon known as a threesome as every man’s dream. They want you to want it.

Ironically, you can have sex with only one woman at a time. Believe it or not, the same principle applies to many other things in life too.

The eternal question whether you can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time has a similar answer. In 99% of the cases, you can only do one or the other. Gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time is similar to pressing the brake and the gas pedal simultaneously. In order for one to be effective, you need to let go of the other.

To lose fat, you need to be in a caloric deficit. To gain muscle, you need to be at least at maintenance calories.

What about recomposition?

Somebody very optimistic came up with the idea that if you follow a very specific regimen, you can recompose your body and lose fat while gaining muscle. Cool, except that this almost never happens.

Recomposition is similar to driving a few meters and then backing off a few meters while expecting to get to the other end of the world by midnight. Clearly, similar methods won’t take you very far. The progress will be so hard to spot that even your biggest fans won’t detect it.

Note: Many programs speculate with before and after photos. Most of the time the person that has supposedly re-compositioned his or hers body has simply lost fat without gaining any muscle. A ripped body looks bigger with a pump and creates the illusion that muscle mass has been acquired. In reality, that mass was already there.

The exceptions

In specific situations, an individual may gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. People who haven’t trained in a long time or a completely new to weightlifting may gain a few pounds of muscle while shredding a few pounds of fat. However, we are talking about minuscule changes that end very quickly.

Furthermore, in some cases, obese people gain and lose muscle at the same time. However, most people looking for a way to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time do not fall in either of the mentioned categories.

The muscle elixirs

Anabolic steroids can help you gain a serious amount of muscle while losing fat. Bodybuilders who grow into a show are the evidence. They get bigger and bigger while cutting the last few pounds of fat. Naturals can never do that.

In addition, steroids make your body more efficient at using the macronutrients found in your food. There are many bodybuilders who have atrocious diets full of junk food, and yet they remain big and lean.

In conclusion

Don’t trust the programs promising you to gain 10lbs of muscle while losing 10lbs of fat in 10 weeks. Forget it! Without anabolic drugs that ain’t happening. You can follow the most sophisticated diet on Earth – it’s still not happening. You are either gaining weight or losing it. You are either building muscle or losing fat.